A Massacre We Didn't Hear
About

The following article appeared
in the January 1, 1992
Los Angeles Times.

This is the story you saw on the evening news:

At lunch hour on Wednesday, Oct. 16, George
Jo Hennard of Belton, Tex. smashed his Ford pickup through the plate glass
doors of Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, injuring some patrons immediately.
While other patrons rushed toward the truck believing the driver was a
heart-attack victim, Hennard calmly climbed out of his pickup, took out two
9-millimeter
semi-automatic pistols, and started shooting people in the cafeteria's
serving line.

Hennard continued shooting for 10 minutes,
reloading five times. One of his pistols jammed repeatedly, causing him to
discard it. There would have been plenty of opportunity for any of the
cafeteria's customers or employees to return fire. None did because none of
them were armed. Texas law forbids private citizens from carrying firearms
out of their home or business. Luby's employee's manual forbids employees
from carrying firearms.

Police officers were inside Luby's within
minutes. But before they were able to corner Hennard in the cafeteria's
restroom, where he turned his gun fatally on himself, Hennard had killed 15
women and 8 men, wounded 19 and caused at least five more to be injured
attempting to flee.

The Killeen massacre was ready-made
excitement for the media: a madman with a gun, lots of gruesome pictures.
CBS News devoted an entire "48 Hours" Dan Rather report to it.
Sarah
Brady of
Handgun Control Inc. capitalized on it in a nationally published column to
call Congress cowardly for voting down more stringent gun laws the next day.

Now here's a story you probably didn't see:

Late at night on Tuesday, December 17, two
men armed with recently-stolen pistols herded 20 customers and employees of
a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston, Ala., into the walk-in refrigerator, and
locked it. Continuing to hold the manager at gunpoint, the men began robbing
the restaurant.

Then one of the robbers found a customer who
had hidden under a table and pulled a gun on him. The customer, Thomas Glenn
Terry, legally armed with a .45
semi-automatic pistol, fired five shots into that robber's chest and
abdomen, killing him instantly.

The other robber, who was holding the
manager at gunpoint, opened fire on
Terry and grazed him.
Terry returned fire, hitting the second robber several times and wounding
him critically.

The robbery attempt was over. The Shoney's
customers and employees were freed. No one else was hurt.

Because
Terry was armed, and used his gun to stop two armed robbers who had taken a
restaurant full of people hostage, there was no drawn-out crisis, no
massacre, no victims' families for Dan Rather to interview. Consequently,
the story hasn't received much coverage.

Among those who rely on national news media
for their view of the country, the bloody image of Luby's Cafeteria is
available to lend the unchallenged impression that guns in private hands
serve only to kill innocent people. The picture of 20 hostages walking out
of Shoney's refrigerator unharmed, because a private citizen was armed that
night, is not.

As we celebrate the bicentennial of the
Bill of Rights, it's worth noting that the Framers wrote the
Second Amendment so the people's
defense would be in our own hands, and we wouldn't have to rely on a
"standing army" or "select
militia" for our security. Though no police departments existed in
America then, there's no historical doubt that the Framers had considered
centralized public
defense, and considered it not merely ineffective, but itself dangerous to
public safety. Recent vigilante-type police attacks, such as the beating of
Rodney King, lend credence.

Yet, it's fashionable to relegate
constitutional protections to the dustbin of history. Judges sworn to defend
the
Constitution ignore its clear provisions, as do legislators. Virtually every
major organ of society - both political parties, the media, the American Bar
Assn., the
ACLU - urges them to do so.

Today's "consensus reality"
asserts that private firearms play no effective role in the civic
defense, and that firearms must be restricted to reduce crime. The media
repeat these assertions as a catechism, and treat those who challenge them
as heretics.

Yet, we have before us an experiment showing
us alternative outcomes. In one case, we have a restaurant full of unarmed
people who rely on the police to save them. The result is 23 innocent lives
lost, and an equivalent number wounded. In the second case, we have one
armed citizen on the scene and not one innocent life lost.

How can the choice our society needs to make
be any clearer?

It's time to rid ourselves of the
misbegotten idea that public safety can be achieved by unilateral
disarmament of the honest citizen, and realize that the price of public
safety is, like liberty, eternal vigilance. We can tire ourselves in futile
debates on how to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Or we can decide that
innocent lives deserve better than to be cut short, if only we, as a
society, will take upon ourselves the civic responsibility of defending our
fellow citizens, as Thomas Glenn
Terry did in Alabama.

My account of Thomas Glenn Terry's actions in this
article was based on an Alabama newspaper account. I later interviewed
Terry for a weekly radio program I was hosting and discovered that the account
was mistaken on several points.

Postal clerk
Terry was finishing a late-night dinner with his wife when the robbers came in
and took over the restaurant.
Terry hid his .45 Colt Government Model under his sweater, not seeing any
immediate opportunity to use it. Terry's wife was captured with the other
customers and herded off to the cooler, where one of the robbers proceeded to
collect wallets and jewelry.

Terry did not hide under a table; he had
separated himself from the other customers and managed to get to a back door in
the Shoney's to see if it was open so he could escape and call the police. The
door was chained shut. At that point one of the robbers discovered him and when
the robber drew on him,
Terry pulled his own
handgun from under his sweater and returned fire, incapacitating this robber,
who ultimately survived. The second robber heard the exchange of gunfire and
also drew on
Terry; it was the gun fight between
Terry and this second robber which resulted in the robber running out to the
parking lot, where he died from his wounds. It was at this point that
Terry told the store manager to phone the police, informing them that an armed
customer was present;
Terry then proceeded to the cooler and released his wife and the other
customers.

Both robbers whom
Terry shot had previous armed robberies on their record, and one had murdered a
motel clerk just a few days earlier. A third robber escaped as soon as
Terry exchanged gunfire with the first robber.

The only national media outlet to cover this
incident as news, just two months after the Killeen restaurant massacre, was the
Christian Science Monitor. -JNS

QUOTES
TO REMEMBER

The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. — William Rawle, A View of the Constitution 125-6 (2nd ed. 1829)

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